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Genetically Modified Maize Is Toxic — Greenpeace
gandracu writes "It appears that a variety of genetically modified maize produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it and tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace fought in court to obtain the data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GM maze in question, has been authorized for markets in the US, EU, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. Here are Greenpeace's brief on the study and their account of how the story was unearthed (both PDFs)."
Summary?
Monsanto says "cases of liver and kedney damage not statistically significant."
greenpeace says "liver and kidney damage cases are statistically significant." Rats not fat.
No data is given.
Maybe judgement should be reserved until someone has seen this data. I believe both sides here would have no problem with manipulating data for thier own interests.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Oh -- now they're not pre-biased against it, not at all.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Nobody eats corn as it was created by nature: All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot. Not that we shouldn't be careful: There are dangers in modifying foods, and the amount of change has a direct bearing on the amount of danger.
Just don't claim that 'non-GM' corn is 'as nature intended'. It just took humans longer to modify it.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
And we're surprised at this?
There are two sides to this:
(1) GM is bad, and this corn is a good example - see the potential damage
(2) GM is new, some food are bad for you, this is an example where some people are sensitive to...(blah blah blah)
GM peanuts would be pretty toxic to a small percentage of the population, and might even have a (small but barely significant) increase in reaction from those sensitive.
TFA is light on detail, and I'm not a biogeneticist. I think I'll pass on judgement here right now. I don't trust Monsanto to tell the truth, but I also don't trust GreenPeace to not have an agenda.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Aye, they make me kind of squeamish too, however they do have the possibility of helping eliminate hunger around the world. Who's to say?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
However, it is also apparent that no experiments have been carried out to investigate this product's effect on human subjects. The toxicity symptoms found in rats should have been a springboard for further investigation, but it seems it was not (unless this has been covered up).
Unfortunately these days corporate dishonesty is not seen as unusual or unacceptable in any way, so what we need is smoking gun evidence of toxicity in human beings, exceeding such toxicity as may be found naturally in other foodstuffs.
The sad part is that "genetic modification" is going to take the majority of the blame, not the individuals at Monsanto that actually caused the problem.
It appears that a variety of genetically modified maze produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys
Keep calm, mazes are not that hard. There is no reason to get that stressed out. Just follow one of the walls at the entrance and you'll eventually get out.
The difference is that the meddling now can occur on a deeper level and with more control than what we used to do.
We've been (trying to) improving nature as long as we exist. That corn you think was created by nature is already the result of careful breeding for centuries.
This is the first time I've ever read a news report that shows Greenpeace doing something besides political grandstanding. They actually went out and hired someone to do an analysis of the data. Maybe this is the start of a new trend - results-oriented activism, as opposed to the feel-good activism of the past.
Well good thing this didnt happen with a huge crop like corn. Why if that happened and it mixed with our natural corn we could be in a lot of trouble. Thank god no one eats maize anymore.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I wouldn't call whaling "technological progress". Also, I haven't seen Greenpeace protest against technological progress in the field of, say, solar power.
This may or may not be true (I'm skeptical when it's just one single study that had some ambiguous questions), but Greenpeace is not the one that ought to report it. Yes, the messenger does matter. If this is really true, give it to a mainstream organization and let them figure it out.
Of course, we know Greenpeace won't do that, since they're all about the publicity.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I think you're looking for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
This just in: Virtually all food is toxic.
It has been discovered recently that virtually all food products known to mankind contain either fat-soluble vitamins or other compounds shown to build up and eventually damage the organs that process them when consumed to extreme excess. Even water-soluble vitamins and yet other compounds have been shown to dilute blood, deplete salts, and otherwise wear down the various organs they come in contact with in extreme amounts.
Moreover, it has been shown that virtually all physical objects are toxic in these same regards. Air in too high or low concentrations is extremely toxic. Even completely filtered air has been shown to be linked to negative effects on the immune system, and thus even the cleanest living ideals can be considered toxic!
Furthermore, even non-physical things can be considered toxic - most ideas taken to extreme have been shown to have negative physical consequences for the holders of these ideas. From peace extremists, to defense extremists, to health extremists, to even low-stress extremists, virtually all philosophies and ideas can be shown to be completely toxic in large doses.
Ryan Fenton
Actually, if you want to be technical, 'corn' and 'grain' are roughly synonims, and 'maize' is the correct name for this specific type of corn. Just like 'wheat' is the correct name for a different type of corn...
(This is why you'll find references to 'corn' in European texts predating Columbus: it is being used in the general sense.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
So ? How is GM going to solve the problems of distribution (as in: how do you get food to people in a frickin war zone ?) ? Starvation isn't a problem of there being not enough food on this planet (not yet, anyways. This might change with the growing world population, overfishing of the oceans and climate change). It's a problem of getting the food where it is needed. Usually, the people there could feed themselves just fines if it weren't for the idiots making war.
Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology: http://www.springerlink.com/content/02648wu132m078 04/fulltext.html
So the "Independent Scientists" for Greenpeace got the Monsanto data and reanalyzed it and say there are significant biological differences (which is different from statistically significant). The only definite conclusion though I can find is that rats should not subsist entirely on this genetically modified corn.Aspartame has some of the "smoking gun" evidence you mention, yet it is still on the market. The number of people actually poisoned by Aspartame are very low, and treated as "statistically insignificant", so the product continues to be used.
Even if the GMO corn is used by humans and someone is killed by it (not just poisoned), there would just be a number of studies and some finger pointing to show that it was actually something else that may have been responsible for the poisoning. As long as something else may be responsible, there is reasonable doubt and the GMO food would remain on the market.
You need a lot of "smoking guns" to get a product off the market after it's been established. It's much easier to keep such products off the market in the first place.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
And thus people grew accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries. When you modify something and it's vastly different than what the body can handle it can cause serious issues.
Corn and tomatoes are indigenous to the Americas. When the settlers from Europe or wherever arrived, they ate corn and tomatoes, that had been selectively grown for centuries. They were not accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries and yet they suffered no ill effects.
Have you ever eaten anything for the first time?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I have been reading all over the net that the bees have been just disappearing and creating a real crisis. Bees are absolutely essential in polinating corn and many, many other crops. Could it be that tese GM foods are also toxic to the bees?
I don't want to be sounding like a luddite but I have some really bad feeling about GM foods now. These bees just disappear. Empty hives and no clues?! WTF? And, so far none of the usual suspects are to blame.
That 2012 date is sure looming more real to me.
cheers
Mind | Body | Spirit | Cash
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot.
If that's the case, if it's nothing new, how can it be patented?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"NutraIngredients USA isn't exactly a reputable journal..."
n ger/00244/index.asp
RTFA. The peer reviewed journal noted is "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology" published by Springer. http://www.environmental-expert.com/magazine/spri
Looks a proper journal to me.
"Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology is a repository of significant, full-length articles describing original experimental or theoretical research work pertaining to the scientific aspects of contaminants in the environment. It provides a place for the publication of detailed, definitive, complete, credible reports concerning advances and discoveries in the fields of air, water, and soil contamination and pollution, human health aspects, and in disciplines concerned with the introduction, presence, and effects of deleterious substances in the total environment. Acceptable manuscripts for the Archives are the ones that deal with some aspects of environmental contaminants, including those that lie in the domains of analytical chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, agricultural, air, water, and soil chemistry.
All manuscripts are subject to review by workers in the field for significance, credibility and accuracy, as well as for proper arrangement (format, style, language, etc.) Review articles, abstracts, short communications or notes will not be accepted for publication. Where appropriate, these will be referred to Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, or Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. "
the newly builtin insecticide perhaps?
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
Changing the genetic code modifies the protiens that the corn produces. Changing genetic code can turn proteins into poison (not all proteins are digestible). Now, such a thing is unlikely- what is more probable is that the corn now produces more of a specific protein than it used to, and the higher dose of this new protein is toxic. Remember, anything is toxic at high enough dosages, even Water.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Ah, but you forget that this is Monsanto corn. The corporation's aura of sheer evil caused the toxicity!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You seem to be implying that until we understand a mechanism in detail we should proceed as if there are no ill effects. That would maybe be OK if we understood a bigger fraction of the stunningly complex interrelationships at work in living things. But we don't so caution, even extreme caution is wise.
And I don't think Greenpeace has ever profited from anything.
Cool, where are the 50 others? I would like to see. Or are you just taking ad homoim shots because you have nothing better ?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Certainly it cannot be the modification process itself, since it uses natural enzymes.
Just because it's natural does not mean that its non-toxic. There are a lot of poisonous enzymes that occur naturally in the environment. For example, naturally occurring almonds have a poisonous enzyme. A quote from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond):
Different tap water gives me the runs for days until I grow used to it (usually when I'm on vacation). Even cooking or bathing with the water can cause this for me. I grow used to the water in the new location and return home to sit in the bathroom again for several more days.
It's not the water that gives you the runs, it is the bacteria in the water. Small traces of bacteria are far more likely to cause illness than a new food, or even a food with small traces of chemical toxins, because bacteria are capable of reproducing within your body to large numbers. Over time, your intestinal bacteria reach a new balance and your body adjusts to them.
If I remember correctly, Monsanto modified soybeans and corn to be "RoundUp Ready" as they called it. Basically they GE'd the plants so that they would not be affected by Monsanto's RoundUp pesticide, allowing farmers to spray their whole field with the pesticide and leave their crops untouched. So I would venture to say that in order to make these plants resistant, there is probably something being produced by them that is not entirely natural.
But even if this corn does NOT produce anything un-natural, you still have the issue of farmers being able to indiscriminately spray pesticides on their fields without affecting the corn. Undoubtedly this means that more RoundUp is getting on the corn, in the ground, etc., than would otherwise be possible, so I wouldn't doubt that some of the pesticide is moving up through the food chain to us. Either way, you have non-natural chemicals entering the human food supply, which could easily have adverse health effects.
While we're on it, I want to say that Monsanto is about as virulently evil as Greenpeace when it comes to protecting their interests. They have actually made patents on seeds, and have gone after farmers for "patent infringement" if they find evidence of seed on their fields with similar genetic code. Farmers have been jailed over this; Monsanto's kind of like the MPAA of grain. They are even pushing "Terminator" seeds, which are sterile, forcing farmers into purchasing seed from suppliers every year instead of keeping their seed for the next crop. Monsanto tried to cover up reports of the adverse health effects of BGH (bovine growth hormone), the list goes on and on. The wikipedia has decent, somewhat unbiased (IMO) coverage of the issue and I'm sure you can google up some more.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Umm, most plants produce natural toxins they use for biological warfare against other plants and animals. Most genetic modification is an attempt to either increase a toxin to kill a pest (rootworm) or increase a resistance to a toxin to fight another plant or a artificially introduced toxin. In this case the corn was designed to create a toxin (Bt-toxin (Cry3Bb1)) and as a byproduct also is said to create (Cry1Ab).
So the most probable indication is that one of those two toxins has more of a negative affect upon rats and thus possibly other mammals like humans than was previously believed. Greenpeace responsibly refrained from making specific claims about the intermediate causation as that is still not yet determined. There is, however, a reasonable amount of evidence that this strain of GM corn could be dangerous to humans and animals and should be investigated and possibly pulled from the market or at least labeled until the topic is fully investigated.
It just seems to me that Greenpeace is following the formula of the religions - find something that is mysterious and unsettling to the average person, vilify it, then profit.Greenpeace is a bunch of marketing people for the most part. It is possible every tuesday night they gather beneath an abandoned monastery and eat human babies.That doesn't however, speak to the accuracy or implications of this research.
Genetic engineering is not a panacea, but nor is it a boogieman.Genetic engineering is a science where people mess about with code without understanding the full implications of what that will result in. It's like modifying software while only having read and understood a small portion of the code and not the other code dependent upon it. As such, I think that while it is promising, extra caution and care needs to be exercised and I don't think the FDA or the commercial enterprises involved give a damn about anything but money and are uninterested in taking appropriate precautions.
Genetically modified foods still contain the same amino acids in their proteins as all the other foods, so unless you modify their biochemistry to an extent where they'll produce real toxins, they will be digested just the same.Genetically modified foods almost all produce toxins. The question is did some change to the genetic structure cause it to create different ones or toxins in different levels and what does that mean for normal people? Another part of the problem is the food almost always appears to be the same as non-modified food and is often not labeled. Would you eat some random plant when you did not know if it was edible and no one had ever seen it before? Every GM food is one of those. Most are probably fine, just like most plants are. Some might be developing toxins that are harmful or concentrating something from their environment which is harmful. If we made it to other planets and found them with ecosystems very much like the earth, but separated by millions of years of evolution, would you trust that something that looks like corn has not adapted in such a way that it is poisonous? That's sort of what GM food is, a common food, modified not by evolution but by man in a way we don't fully understand the consequences of. Often the results are beneficial, but caution should be the byword and thorough testing and serious consideration of possible problems. The fact that this corn might be at the grocery store near you with no indication that it is not the natural corn most people expect it to be is a deception and needs to be considered.
One possible basis of toxicity is discussed in one of the PDFs that the article links to:
April 8, 2003: The German competent authorities publish their assessment of the MON863 application. In their report they state that the amino acid sequence of the Cry3B1 toxin produced by the MON863 maize has similarities to some other toxins. Most notably, the German authority found some "homologies to sequences from Clostridium bifermentans, Caenorhabditis elegans, Vibrio cholerae and Bacillus popilliae." These homologies are of high relevance in respect to human and animal health.
It seems warranted to at least be concerned about the unknown effects of introducing a protein which is classified as a toxin into one's diet. Particularly where the "science" backing it up is not analyzed independently, and cannot be reviewed, as the underlying data submitted to the regulatory agencies is held to be confidential.
Alternatively, you seem to suggest that data or experience suggesting the safe use of substances independently of each other somehow implies they are safely used together. It's fairly easy to come up with counterexamples in everyday life (ammonia and chlorine as cleaning supplies, for example), let alone in the more complex and unpredictable field of biochemistry.
Recognising the fact that you are unaware of whether or not the studies he's referring to actually exist, aren't you just as guilty of attacking him because you have nothing better yourself?
Even worse, the Terminator genes are dominant. Which has a very devastating effect if introduced by a single farmer in places where farmers still use some of their harvest as seeds for the next year.
There's no way that poisoning people (and leaving a papertrail that you knew it would happen) would be considered due diligence for a business. More likely a yesman somewhere got a bonus for delivering the corn on time and sloppily hid the bad part. Ie, don't explain by malice or stupidity that which can be adequately explained by self-interest.
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism (but I'll cut it down this time to the genetic-manupilation part:
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end.
So, in conclusion; the author is fully right about some things, but a bit too simplistic (and, perhaps, biased) in other points. The nuclear/weather point is, indeed, logical. The world-demographics is correct, though there is a need for caution as to determine what is the cause, and if simple extrapolation is enough to make a conclusion. As for the GM-crops, I fear he is a bit misguided himself; this is obvious by the naive assumption of how much 'good' GM-crops will do - which is, I suspect, derived from an overly (and typical USA) optimistic viewpoint on capitalism, which I don't share.
GM-corporations do not care about worldhunger, nor about the living quality of poor farmers in third (or first, for that matter) worldcountries. What matters to them is maximising profit for their shareholders. In the authors' view, this is fully compatible with eachother, but I rather think that, in the end, you can't have both: if it's really about maximising profit, then it is about holding control of the market, and if it's about control, then it's not about the freedoms and abilities and rights of the farmer. This already can be seen by the fact many GM corporations have forbidden the 's
I won't disagree per say, but what makes you believe that new foods created by direct genetic manipulation are any more or less dangerous than new foods created by indirect genetic manipulation? Being "natural" doesn't make something safe. If you're going to require extensive testing and quarantine for directly manipulated foods why not require the same for new foods created through selective breeding?
There have been cases of selective breeding gone wrong, in both plants and animals -- I'm not sure any of those cases lead to toxicity in human foodstuffs (though I'm not sure they didn't either) but they have lead to inferior breeds of plants and animals. Take almost any breed of show dog, or hybrid African bees, or several varieties of plants we previously grew intentionally that are now considered non-native weeds.
I'm not saying we shouldn't test new foods, I just don't see why the method of creation is a significant influence in the diligence we should have in testing.
I think we need to clarify what we mean by the terms "natural" and "non-natural" before we can debate which of those categories Monsanto's GM food products fall into.
Ok. If I may gripe for a second: This is where the engineering mindset, which occupies probably around 99% of the /. community (IT guys, coders, physicists, engineers of all types), has trouble coming to grips with biological issues.
Assume for a second that Greenpeace is correct, and that rates of liver damage are statistically significant. That means that, all things being equal, eating this corn is harmful to the rats' livers. Case closed. Aside from figuring out what that reason is in order to fix it, there's no reason to go through all of that--it is a simple application of Occam's Razor.
It looks like you're going through troubleshooting steps..."It can't possibly be this...and it can't possibly be that either!" DO NOT make the mistake of discounting the study because you cannot come up with a root cause right away. First off, in biology it's typically a bad idea to conclude, a priori, that certain variables are not an issue: it's simply a more complex and less well-understood discipline than something as clean-cut as, say, orbital mechanics. Second, you have a much greater potential for interaction effects and emergent properties--stuff you can never predict, but which becomes blatantly obvious once you see it and characterize it...for example, ant colony behavior: if you get some huge number of ants together, the coordination and patterned behavior is fascinating, but it's not obvious from the random behavior of a single ant that such behavior would ever emerge. Once you see it, however, you can easily experiment and track it back to things like pheremones.
The mindset issue comes down to the difference between bottom-up and top-down analysis. Bottom-up analysis will tell you facts, but is poor for integrating those facts. That's what I think you're looking to do. At some point you have to look at the big picture--a view that doesn't tell you much aside from how the facts fit together, and where you should look next. Good analysts do both. Bad analysts either never research facts (this is in fact what you are accusing "religions" of doing) or they fall into the trap of extreme reductionism, wherein you discount observations if your radically simplistic understanding of the universe cannot explain them.
This last is what a friend of mine, who is an aero engineer, does all the time. He knows that physics informs chemistry informs biology informs psychology informs political science--but since he cannot explain election results in terms of the Newtonian motion of atoms, he dismisses any such study as bullshit, as well as the conclusions draw from that bullshit. But you don't have to explain things at the lowest level possible in order to draw meaningful conclusions, such as in this case: Better hold off on eating that Monsanto corn for the time being.
That doesn't seem too alarmist, nor am I trying to vilify genetic engineering. The fact that Monsanto apparently should have made that announcement and instead decided to gloss over it, and thereby profit from others' loss (what you accuse Greenpeace of doing), does tend to make them somewhat vile in my eyes, however.
Wow, nice ad homenim attack you've got there. "All people who disagree with me are doody heads, neener neener neener"
Has it occured to you that people are leery of GM products because there is no evidence to suggest it is safe? The people making this stuff say "you have no evidence it's unsafe", and dismiss any criticism of putting things which have been barely studied into our food supply. Some of us would like the proof this stuff is safe to come from actual tests before we've eaten it. You know, feed it to a bunch of rats and make sure they don't get any unusual ailments at a minimum. Certainly, not supressing evidence you have which suggests it might actually be known to be unsafe.
Expressing doubt about the safety of something which is untested and merely presumed to be safe is neither idiotic or showing signs of being a luddite. It's showing a little skepticism against unsupported claims and erring on the side of caution where human health is concerned. Because, when you get this horribly wrong, people might end up dead for no good reason other than corporate profits.
But, I guess maybe the morons in the pro-anything-technology camp are incapable of seeing the difference.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I would go one step further and note that, when the West sells seed to starving African nations, it's "Terminator" seed.
:)
We don't give those nations a hand up, we put them on life support.
Just another example of how free enterprise and secular science benefit the poor by the innate goodness of their natures...
Ok, maybe that was a poor troll. But only for being obvious, not for being false
Suppose a particularly stubborn insect is endemic in your country, rendering most crops ungrowable.
You have a choice: Import food from outside or find a crop that does grow. Thanks to Monsanto, you can grow GM crops.
Now suppose the food-distribution system is a mess and you can't import enough food to feed all your people.
NOW you have a choice: Grow GM crops or let the people starve.
Disclaimer: Real life is a lot more complicated than this example. There are almost always other choices.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I agree with your points. My main beef with the anti-GM crowd is that they single out genetic manipulation in the lab, and not other forms of genetic manipulation (like selective breeding).
Any process that changes the genetic composition of a plant or animal has some potential to cause problems. We need to have standards in place to ensure the food supply is safe - and it amounts to more than just banning products that use recombinant DNA. Farmers have practiced selective breeding since the age of Mendel - usually without much thought to expensive safety testing.
Arguably there is no such thing as "natural corn" these days.
I'm a farmer's son, and 'sterile' seed has been the status quo for almost a century. GMO's just a new way of doing it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
The real issue with genetic modification is the increases scope and speed of such changes. A person breeding corn might be able to breed to different strains to produce a new one and it could conceivable result in higher levels of some dangerous toxin corn naturally produces. But, given both strains of corn have existed for some time and have presumably been safe to eat, it is a lot less likely than if someone actually targets the genetic code that controls toxicity levels. GM opens up whole new avenues of change that selective breeding and random mutation are highly unlikely to ever touch and as such more caution is required.
Arguably there is no such thing as "natural corn" these days.When people go to the store and buy a corn, they have expectations. Those expectations include that the corn is from one of the many strains that have been being consumed for a long time, or a combination of those strains. They don't expect that corn to have significant changes to its genetic code, and unless it has been exposed to a significant mutagen they are right. I'd argue that passing of corn that has been genetically modified or heavily exposed to mutagens as "normal" corn is not in their best interests and is deceitful. There is a real difference in the risk posed between "natural" corn and GM corn, although to most people educated on the subject that delta is pretty small. By being honest, however, companies investing in such products are motivated both to produce benefits end users care about and to make sure the testing process is thorough so that GM foods earn/develop a reputation for safety.
And, apparently, poisonous. So really you don't need seeds that will grow more than on generation...I see the beautiful logic now!
Really, I'm not clear on what this has to do with whether or not it's a good thing to give people "Terminator" corn. You could give people seeds that grow golden Cadillacs, but if the cars all break down after a year you're not really addressing a transportation issue with them, are you? And while you're fielding questions, can you tell me what my own charitable donations have to do with whether or not it's ethical for Monsanto to sell Terminator seeds?
In reality, the seed most farmers get in Africa is subsidized by their government, meaning, they plant what they are given, which is what the government bought them. If you don't believe that the government officials involved are getting a payout, then I suspect you don't know much about how government works on this planet.
In any case, I suppose you're entitled to your opinion. I do know that farmers in Africa consistently reject GM crops that have riders attached in favor of crops they can manage all on their own...so maybe both they and I know something you don't.
I experience migraines after consumption of as little as a soda's worth. Just because you don't does
not make the substance less problematic or any less toxic. Many people have a higher toxicity threshold
for that substance than do others.
PKU people can have severe problems from it- there's a very real reason that they put that warning on
the packaging that the stuff's in the food, a PKU person can die from much lower consumption levels.
Normally they'd avoid the foods with the Phenylalanine, but they put Aspartame into the damnedst stuff
these days. Sort of like all the HFCS they keep putting into things like bread, sodas, etc. High
Fructose Corn Syrup's actually more problematic to humans than Sucrose because refined Fructose in the
concentrations we consume makes humans fat and causes those who might have a some level of risk for
Type II Diabetes to actually GET it.
While I understand your sentiments, the things we have in our food supply is disturbing. Things we really
probably ought not to consider acceptable. Aspartame's one of a bunch of them that really do fall under
the category of, "This is probably not a good idea in the first place..." and should be pulled off the market.
I suspect Splenda may even fall under that category (Chlorinated Hydrocarbons are pesticides in most cases
and if you just straight chlorinated Sucrose, you get a deadly toxin to humans...) but since it's less
problematic on the surface for me, as a Type II Diabetic, I'm forced to choose either nothing at all (Other
choices due to market considerations and FDA not approving some viable answers are barred to me...) or Splenda
stuff.
Nice.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"Ah, but you forget that this is Monsanto corn. The corporation's aura of sheer evil caused the toxicity!"
I love how this got modded +5 insightful.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
BT and GMO is as much about patents as anything else. See the case of Percy Schmeiser. http://www.percyschmeiser.com/crime.htm His field was contaminated by Monsanto genetics. Monsanto sued him and won!
I own a piece of land that has some tillable acres. It had a history of rotated corn and beans sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. I planted it to pasture. http://mikesmind.com/home/?p=33 What amazed me more than anything is that I couldn't find an earthworm on the tillable portion! The earth was basically dead. It's starting to come back now.
Genetic modifications and the subsequent application of chemicals is poisoning our land.
www.mikesmind.com - www.daddyworkathome.com - www.freetofarm.org - www.tenfoottable.com
No they are not.
m e.htm
"Springer Verlag" is the (german) root of the scientific publisher founded by a man called "Julius Springer" in 1842 which is now "Springer Science+Business Media" (Which is basically the Springer Verlag merged with Kluwer Publishers). If you are interested here is the company history: http://www.springer-sbm.de/index.php?L=0&id=165
The "Axel Springer Verlag" is a completely different company, which was founded by a man called "Axel Springer" in 1946. See also: http://www.axelspringer.com/englisch/unterneh/fra
The founders of both companies shared the last name, hence the "Springer" in both company names.
Yes. I've even seen pictures on the news at night of Monsanto agents holding guns to farmer's heads, preventing them from buying standard seeds without the terminator gene. Someone stop these bastards from forcing their seeds down people's throats!
Scenario.
1) Farmer A plants terminator seeds.
2) Farmer B plants non-terminator seeds in the next field over.
3) Farmer A's terminator crops cross-pollinate with Farmer B's crops, reducing Farmer B's yield.
4) Nice sales person from company M shows up at Farmer B's door offering a low introductory price on terminator seeds.
5) Profit.
You can't claim this won't happen because it already has. Cross-pollination by RoundupReady crops has already been the basis for a legal case in Canada, where a farmer noticed that some patches in his field were pesticide resistant and deliberately saved and replanted those seeds. Monsanto sued and won.
The certain truth of GM foods is that the genes will get loose, and the terminator gene in particular is nothing more than a weapon of commercial bio-terrorism, a gun aimed at the head of innocent farmers whose fields happen to be adjacent to those who choose to use terminator seeds. To employ your silly analogy, how would you feel if any Windows machine on the same subnet progressively reduced the capability of all your Linux or Mac boxes? Would you be perfectly happy with your neighbours or the company down the street buying Windows?
Personally, I think it should be considered a serious crime to allow GM crops to cross-pollinate any other crop, and that both farmers who use them and companies that sell them should be liable for triple damages for any losses that occur, and unable to claim any recompense for benefits that accrue, to innocent farmers of adjacent fields.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
"My main beef with the anti-GM crowd is that they single out genetic manipulation in the lab, and not other forms of genetic manipulation (like selective breeding)."
I'm afraid there is a monumental difference. Selective breeding of organisms that are, by nature, biologically compatible is hardly the equivalent of splicing fish genes into rose bushes. That's just my wild example, but it's exactly the sort of thing that's being done. I didn't get super concerned about GM foods until I did some research and found out the extent of the "genetic manipulation" that's going on. They are creating mutant species that couldn't possibly occur in nature on a time frame smaller than on the order of millennia.
Think of the problems we're seeing with invasive species all over the world. e.g. someone empties a fish tank in the Mediterranean and one of the plants ends up covering tens of thousands of acres of the sea floor choking off all life in its path. Now, we're introducing these GM species into the environment that have never even been seen anywhere in the world. It's insane.
There is a very delicate balance in the biosphere which was shaped over immense periods of time with the coexistence of slowly evolving species. Adding these mutant freak genes into the mix is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The risk of unintended consequences is simply too great.
... the Terminator system works not by preventing pollination, or making the seeds infertile, but by causing the next generation of crops to die at an early age. So the second farmer got as many fertilized seeds as there would have been anyway, but a portion of them had acquired the Terminator gene, and were therefore nonviable.
At least, that's how it was explained to me some time ago. I could very well be wrong.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And _you_ did your research then? From what I understand, the _whole_ mutation in this particular strain of corn is to make it produce a sort of a natural pesticide. I.e., yes, a toxin.
Now Monsanto basically says, "yeah, but it's not toxic to mammals." Greenpeace says, "whoa, actually that data says that it's somewhat toxic to rats."
Now both positions _could_ be true. It _is_ possible for something to be toxic to insects without being lethal to humans. (See coffeine. It really evolved as a paralyzing poison against insects. See why Robusta is a hardier crop than Arabica: the Robusta plant simply produces more of it. Yet a human can drink lots of it for decades without being too harmed in the process.) On the other hand, the opposite _can_ be true too. And without proper testing how would you know?
So, pray tell, without even seeing the research, how _do_ you know which side is right and which is wrong? Or are you just motivated enough to rant against Greenpeace even when you have no fucking clue what is it about? At least, even as motivated studies go, they did at least do and publish one. You did... what? to get your info on which to base such a swift judgment.
Hand-waving about mutations happening randomly in nature is at best brain-damaged too. Equally random mutations in plants include atropine (nightshade), ricin (deadly in 0.2mg doses and no antidote), solanine, cyanide (wild almonds), etc. And that's just the short list of the most known ones. We could go into a couple hundred other fun natural stuff, including such exotic effects as immuno-suppressors in some moulds. Just because something _could_ have occured naturally doesn't make it automatically safe. All the poisons in this paragraph occured naturally, yet _aren't_ safe at all.
Plus, it often is false as such anyway. Just because something was created via genetic engineering does _not_ automatically mean it could have occured as a natural mutation any day now. There's plenty of GM stuff, like renet-producing moulds or goats whose milk contains spider silk, which would _never_ evolve on their own, not even in another billion years. There's simply no natural advantage in producing those (wake me up when any plant needs to digest fresh milk, which is what it would take to make renet an advantage), and in fact it's a serious disadvantage to waste your energy and aminoacids on producing them.
So, you know, if you're going to go into a whole rant about who's ignorant or worse, it would be nice if you at least took the time to read a bit and have at least some minimal clue what you're talking about.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Change is the only constant.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
You need to educate thyself. I am in ag (and you aren't so pay attention please), and I'll tell you right now Monsanto is NO friend of health, farmers or consumers. Not even close. There is *so* much evidence out there it is astounding. Spend an evening doing some research on their past history. Any place they can be complete jerks, as long as they can squeeze a buck out of it, they do it. And they are really trying to come up with some way to get a global monopoly on food, try their scam with the terminator gene for starters. Look into how they have screwed over farmers with their disgusting canola/rapeseed weed that is spreading all over and infecting other's fields, so they get to *own* those new fields then and sue farmers for "IP" theft.. Look into how they are trying to patent strains of crops that farmers have been using for thousands of years in India. And so on. They make Enron and Haliburton look like upstanding corporate citizens. They've been caught bribing off foreign ag bureaucrats n numerous foreign nations, they are getting away with running OPEN AIR hidden secret test fields where the pollen from their patented crap will escape and keep infecting other fields. And so on.
They need to have their incorporation charters pulled at a minimum, IMO. Just a bad news company all in all. Buying up outside seed companies then stopping production on various strains, to further eliminate competition. I mean, this list goes on and on and on. It is NOT a good idea to reduce biodiversity, that's REAL science. Trying to impose monopolies on food is just pure damn evil, stupid and retarded, no two ways about it. In fact, just from a strictly scientific viewpoint, it is *insane*.
Farmers have NOT practiced CROSS SPECIES selective breeding for centuries. There is simply no comparison between what is being done now with "GM" and what has been done since farming began with just trying to develop more adapted and useful plants. We are getting crops introduced now that are chimeric basically, they would *never* occur in nature no matter what, and no one has any idea at all what the long term effects will be, just the corporations go on the default assumption anything they do with GM is "safe" and it is up to some bureaucrats (in the revolving door industry/government money shuffle) and consumers to do the long term testing.
I think that is pretty stupid.
The only "safety standards" that could apply and would work in the cases of cross species "products" would be generational long studies maintained in highly secure airtight labs, and even then it should be a default until hugely proven otherwise that they could possibly be as harmful as developed bioweapons.
And I am not a luddite, I have just been a gardener and farmer for now more than half a century, and I tell you, some of what they are doing is scarier to me than nuclear weapons proliferation to nutjob nations. because the potential for a mass "whoops" screw up is simply *huge*. Heck's windchimes, just the "normal" invasive species screwups humans have done, sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes just accidentally, has been destructive enough. I spend enough of my time as it is now just trying to deal with multiflora rose, japanese privet and kudzu, let alone trying to deal with stuff that has been bred on purpose to be herbicide "resistant". To me, it is good science and common sense to be WAY skeptical of a lot of the GM production that is going on now, and I personally take it as a default that if it is laboratory manufactured it is suspect immediately. I save my own seeds, have done so for decades, and none of what I grow is harmful. Those guys can't make that claim with a straight face, because they don't know, this is all pretty much new science what is going on, and it is coming way too fast and hard and with too much "this quarter's profit" mentality behind it for there to be safety claims from their side of any true merit.
It could be, but in the case of Bt, it absolutely is toxic to the targeted pests.
Under current law, prior to marketing a new GM food product, manufacturers are required to get FDA approval before selling to consumers, having demonstrated to the FDA's satisfaction its safety for human consumption. They are also required to get EPA and USDA approval that the production does not have adverse impact on agriculture, other plants, animals, humans, or other environmental quality issues. And all this despite the scientifically proven fact that engineered genetic modifications cause fewer adverse changes than traditional methods of mutate-and-crossbreed, which are not subjected to the same regulatory process.
So, if deliberate, selected changes and testing to meet government safety standards makes food safer, GM food is significantly safer than non-GM food. On the other hand, if blind chance mutation and no testing is a mark of safety, non-GM is safer than GM food.
I am very much aware that rats have different metabolisms, but then it's still common sense to have it tested, including on human volunteers, before selling it. Is the difference big enough to make it safe for humans? We don't know basically. We have a whole process for testing and approving, say, medicine, so I fail to see why it wouldn't apply here.
Maybe because so far
1. the _vast_ majority of GM stuff is this kind of stuff: plants bred to somehow poison pests/moulds/bacteria, or at least be more tolerant of strong pesticides. (Those pesticides end up in your food too, even if they aren't produced by the plant itself.)
2. because so far none of this stuff has been rigorously tested and proven to be safe, like a medicine would. So basically you're asked to swallow some pesticide with nothing more than the manufacturer's reassurance that it should only kill insects.
Look, even with medicines we have a long history of stuff that was supposed to only kill some organisms (e.g., bacteria), but ended up damaging humans badly. There are even cases where proper testing on humans looked ok, but several years later we discovered that, oopsie, those people are now dying or giving birth to horrible mutants. So being a little circumspect is more than warranted.
It doesn't mean we should turn into luddites, of course, but it's just common sense to thoroughly test the damn stuff. Just because a corporation says "it's good for you", it doesn't mean you should take it as gospel. Other corporations are equally saying that smoking is good for you, or whatever. There's no way one will _ever_ tell you, "my stuff is toxic, don't buy it." So let's have it properly tested, then. That's all.
Other than that, it's a classic ad-hominem fallacy. Just because some voice is strident, doesn't mean they can't possibly be right. So try to focus on what they're saying, not on why it's unfashionable to listen.
Who cares? Having that stuff tested is common sense even without Greanpeace around. So what difference does it make?
It just means I have no patience with fucking morons. (There, I used that word again.) I'm tollerant of common ignorance, but when one launches into whole rants based on little more than ignorance, preconceptions, ad-hominems, and other fallacies, then I won't even bother being diplomatic. If it hurts their feelings... good! Maybe it will stimulate them to actually engage the brains before throwing the mouth into gear. Maybe even, god forbid, actually read a bit first too. Well, ok, it probably won't happen, but it's still a nice dream.
Is that a pleasant reflection? Dunno, I can live with it. Quite happily.
Lemme try a bit more: fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking. Hmm... nope, I still don't feel bad about it. Sorry.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.